Miers's beliefs, identity were in dispute before nomination was dropped

As U.S. senators and other political leaders pressured the White House for more written evidence of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’s ideas and beliefs, the Texan attorney who recently served as President Bush’s private counsel withdrew her nomination last month.

Almost immediately, religious conservatives appeared eager to unite behind a nominee likely to rule in their favor on hot-button issues like abortion, gay rights and church-state separation. “We stand ready to support a nominee who truly is in the mold of [Justices] Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas,” said Wendy Wright, executive vice president of Concerned Women for America.

Even James Dobson, one of Miers’s most prominent religious supporters, said he was disappointed by recent revelations that she gave speeches a decade ago in which she said “self-determination” should guide decisions about abortion.